When Meaningless Means Much: Mail from Carina Granlund

A card from Carina is always a special pleasure, but this most current one got shuffled to the bottom of my pile of "Need to blog these soon" bits. Not, of course, because it was less worthy of comment and appreciation, but, in fact, because I needed more time to think about my reaction. Since I got involved with mail art a few years ago, Carina has been one of my truest, most dependable correspondents. I am amazed by her creative energy and her skills with a huge range of raw materials. My cards from Carina, all mixed-media pieces of one sort or another, have featured cartoons, road maps, post cards, stamps and stampings, pen-and-ink, color pencils, brushwork, stickers, washi tape, found art, stitchery...etc.

Each of her pieces also includes at least some element of "asemic" (meaningless) print or writing and text-based visual poetry. Carina's native language, Finnish, is utterly "asemic" to me and, I suspect, to the majority of her correspondents, and yet Finnish texts are always an important element in her works. They tease the brain's innate attempt to decode encrypted messages while providing the comforting contexts of comics, newspapers, maps, advertising and other familiar text-based fare. Her English communicating is usually in handwritten form.

This particular card transcends even her usually brilliant tight-rope walk between the meaningful message and the more deeply encrypted brain candy. Here is a quick pen-and-ink sketch I readily recognize as a caricature of Captain John Smith, one of the most colorful and engaging people involved in the founding of England's early American colonies. Carina may or may not know that my profession brought me into deep contact with and appreciation of John Smith. I think his life story would be the stuff of a very fine movie.

With the drawing is a brief fragment of hand-written text that is partly obscured by overlapping with the dark ink blobs that structure the page. It is immediately evident to me that the text is excerpted from a bit of writing about Smith and his role in the founding of the Virginia colony at James City. Smith's writings and actions are essential to understanding the early history of the colony and are central to one of the principal thrusts of my professional career as an anthropologist and archaeologist. This drawing and its half-hidden hand-written message speak clearly to me in a way that they would not--could not--speak to others.

Carina, either you are a mind reader or you really do your homework. Your art just perfectly negotiates the maze of dimensional paths (meaning--aesthetic, personal--universal, visual--textual--tactile) that make contemporary mixed media a joy to make and to receive as a gift from a talented, distant friend.